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Unequal treatment applied to private schools

We never hear of attempts by outsiders to dictate to Jews how to run their yeshivas. The same is true of the increasing number of Islamic schools: no one tells Muslims what their employment policies should be. The same is not true of Catholic schools.

In San Francisco, outsiders have spent an enormous amount of money seeking to pressure the Archdiocese to change its prospective handbook for faculty.

Outsiders, driven by the media, put Iowa Governor Terry Branstad on the firing line: they forced him to comment on Dowling Catholic High School's decision not to hire an openly gay teacher; the Catholic executive exercised good sense and is not getting involved in the internal matters of this school.

A Sommerville, New Jersey Catholic teacher was reinstated after outsiders pressured the school to sanction her for making allegedly anti-gay remarks.

A stink was made by outsiders when they learned that a teacher at a Catholic high school in Omaha, Nebraska did not have his contract renewed; administrators found that he claimed to be engaged to his boyfriend.

The Obama administration's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued a complaint earlier this year against a Georgia Catholic academy because it fired a gay teacher who planned to marry his boyfriend.

It is one thing for Catholic alumni, faculty, and students to register misgivings about school employment policies, quite another when the government, non-profits, local activists, celebrities, the media, and corporations stick their noses in where they don't belong.

Moreover, teachers are not being fired, or hired, because they happen to be gay: they are being rejected because they are flaunting their gay lifestyle. That's not a small difference.